BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

BBC Radio 4 LW

Alain-Fournier's Lost Estate

Alain-Fournier's Lost Estate: Episode 1: A Childhood in Sologne

Documentaries

Factual

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Factual: Life Stories

Episode 1

Episode 1: A Childhood in Sologne

A Childhood in Sologne

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Alain-Fournier's Lost Estate, A Childhood in Sologne

A visit to the places that inspired Alain-Fournier's novel 'Le Grand Meaulnes'.

4 Extra Debut. Julian Barnes and Hermione Lee visit the places that inspired Alain-Fournier's novel of adolescent love, 'Le Grand Meaulnes'. From April 2012.

Julian Barnes and Hermione Lee travel to France in search of the places and people which inspired his novel of adolescent love Le Grand Meaulnes. Part 1: A Childhood in Sologne.

The village school where Fournier's father taught, the holidays he spent at his grandparents' cottage and the tumbledown house in the woods nearby fed the imagination of Henri Alban-Fournier. He drew on these locations when creating his only finished novel Le Grand Meaulnes, a simply written story of love and longing as an adventuring schoolboy discovers an almost mythical lost estate lived in by a young women, which the writer published under his pen name 'Alain-Fournier'. Auguste Meaulnes' fictional quest to retrace his steps and find the woman he dreams about echoes Fournier's own romantic obsession with a young woman he encountered briefly in Paris - whom he later traced using private detectives. 

The novelist Julian Barnes and biographer Hermione Lee compare Le Grand Meaulnes to Dickens, Debussy's opera Pelleas and Melisande and F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and discuss the reputation of the novel in France today. 

Producer: Robyn Read 
Readings by Philip Franks from a translation by Frank Davison.

BBC Radio 4 Extra

Your digital radio entertainment station showcasing the best in comedy and drama

Your digital radio entertainment station showcasing the best in comedy and drama. With recent favourites from BBC Radio 4.

Julian Barnes and Hermione Lee visit French locations that inspired Henri Alain-Fournier

Julian Barnes and Hermione Lee travel France in search of the places and people that inspired Henri Alain-Fournier's novel of adolescent love, Le Grand Meaulnes. With readings by Philip Franks

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Alain-Fournier's Lost Estate

Episode 1: A Childhood in Sologne

Genres

Formats

Series

BBC Radio 4 LW

About BBC Radio 4